


there's a little boy who has a big brother

by circus (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/circus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's gone. Sam's gone, too. I mean, he's there, but he might as well be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's a little boy who has a big brother

**Author's Note:**

> post mystery spot. A tiny bit OOC.

_“Sammy.”_  
 _Sam’s shoulders straightened and his head lifted, but the sniffing continued._  
 _“Aww, c’mon.”_  
__

Sam sniffed on his bed in a motel room.  
His was the only bed.  
Just like his was the only jacket on the nail, only one pair of shoes by the door. There was no pie in the fridge and the radio was playing _Whitney Houston_. You’d never catch Dean playing _Whitney Houston_. Most likely he wouldn’t know who she was.

Sam let his head drop in his hands.

Nobody to say, “Aww, c’mon,” now.  
No, not nobody. Anyone could’ve said that to him - Ellen, Bobby, Ruby - but nobody could say it like _Dean_ , no one could ever, ever make Sam feel the way Dean made Sam _feel_.

And Sam didn’t even know for sure whether Dean knew Whitney Houston.

Not that it was highly important at the moment but all Sam could do was feel lost, confused, stupid, worthless. When he felt like that, it was pointless to stop him from expanding his list of things to regret. But hell, who was there to try and stop him, anyway. He was alone.

He was so in the midst of confusion and at the same time so cut off from emotion that he didn’t know what to do with himself. His brain reasoned that since there was a bullet in his stomach and bullets should not be in stomachs, he should take it out. His brain also didn’t want to do anything, wanted to sit there, replaying memories over and over again until he died from starvation.

Some hours passed and his head felt like lead and his arms felt heavier and when he collapsed onto the floor he realized he had to go to the bathroom because he’d somehow gotten the bullet out and he was bleeding. So he went in and cleaned himself up, pretending he could hear Dean say, “ _Hurry up Sammy, I’ve got mine out, too now_.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Sam jerked into life. _Could be Dean, could be Dean_ , a voice in his head whispered excitedly, and he mentally slapped himself. “You’re a silly prick,” he said aloud as, cautious, he made his way to the door and looked through the peephole. There was no Dean. Hell, not even Bobby. There was no one. But there was scuffling at the door.

Sam raised an eyebrow and opened the door, gun at the ready.

…a puppy.

It wagged its tail and looked up at the him expectantly, tongue out.

Sam’s eyebrows shot down. “Are you serious?”

 _Stare._

“You’re an idiot.”

 _Blink blink._

Sam let out a disbelieving chuckle that sounded crispy and frail. “You’re incredibly lucky.” He pushed the puppy inside.

The puppy automatically made its way to the fridge and whined.

“Dean, look -” Sam grinned, then faltered.

The puppy whispered throatily, gray eyes sad.

Gray eyes.

__

 _Sam was scared, but he was curious. So obviously he walked towards the source of the whining. It was getting louder the closer he got, and right now, he was pretty close._

 _He was standing in front of an exceedingly normal bush, a bit puzzled as of what to do. Parting the branches didn’t occur to him for some reason. Finally, a small black something was shoved rudely out of the green leaves. Sam recoiled, awed and a little confused. It looked like a button, to be honest. It seemed interesting, so Sam sat down on the rock next to him to watch._

 _It kept pushing through, until a small mouth, some brown fur, long ears and a pair of big eyes accompanied the button, which Sam belatedly realised was the nose._

 _The dog looked at him, blinked, and whimpered._

 _Sam pouted. “Don’t look at me, you got yourself in this situation.” The dog sighed (or maybe Sam had an overactive imagination and used the wrong adjectives, like Dad said) and kept pushing._

 _It was an odd sight, a little ten year old hugging his knees, watching a puppy pushing through the dense branches of a bush. It was how Dean found them._

 _“Hey squirt,” Dean greeted, grinning._

 _“Hey,” Sam replied. “Look, Dean, here’s a puppy!”_

 _“You’re a puppy,” Dean stated, lazily ambling to Sam’s seat on the garden rock to give him a friendly shove._

 _“De, seriously!”_

 _So Dean seriously looked around, and found the object of Sam’s attention. “What are you doing?” Dean growled._   
_Sam blinked. “Nothing.”_

 _“Exactly!” Dean huffed, as he went on his knees and forced his hands into the branches._

 _“It’s alright,” Dean whispered as the puppy whined louder, in fright. “I’ve gotcha.”_

 _The next week was pretty awesome, Sam thought. Dean had taught Sam how to bandage the puppy’s torn paw, and they’d named it Denesa. Half of Dean’s name and half of Sam’s. And it was a girly name because of “those pretty gray eyes it had”, as Dean had said._

__

A puppy whined, and it was here, it was now.

Sam walked to the fridge and took out some KFC. “Come on, boy,” he whispered.

The puppy had to be a girl. This one had even shinier pretty gray eyes.

But Sam couldn’t keep a girl puppy with pretty gray eyes right now. Maybe later. When Dean came back.

“Here, boy,” Sam whispered, because there was no strength left after all the remembering, because he was tired of living and breathing and existing, because being friendly with a puppy hurt if Dean wasn’t there to call him one.

The puppy breathed noisily and panted, licking Sam’s socks as he set down a plate of leftovers.

Leftovers of a meal for once, where there’d been one glass of soda. One pair of a plastic fork and knife, not two. Just one. For Sam.

“I wish I could starve,” Sam said stupidly, as he collapsed into his bed and the memories swarmed him again.

__

 _“Sammy,” Dean whispered into his ear as he lay awake, staring at the ceiling._

 _“Mm?”_

 _“We’re going to have leave Denny behind.”_

 _“What?” Sam jerked up straight, the anger and hurt bouncing in his voice off the walls._

 _Dean winced._

 _“Look, love, it’s alright, she’s grown, she can - “_

 _“She’s_ mine. I _found her. She’s the only normal thing in my life. She’s - ” and his voice broke, and he ran off the bed, out the room, looking for her._

 _Dean sighed tiredly as Sam slammed the door behind him._

__

Sam groaned, his head pounding now. “Shut up,” he breathed, although nobody was making any noise. Even the puppy was nestled in quiet sleep, next to his knees.

__

 _Sam was sobbing. People had their hearts broken by girls and boys at his age? Fuck people. His only pet broke his heart. “Stupid Denny,” he whispered, rocking back and forth on his knees, holding the cold dog._

 _“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” and Sam’s voice was raw and cracked and angry and sad._

 _“Why’d you do that, stupid girl?” Sam asked, lowering his arms to glare at her closed eyes. He sobbed again. “I’m sorry, Denny, you’re not stupid. You’re lovely, mm? You’re lovely and smart and perfect. You’re my friend, Denny.”_

 _Sam stuck to Dean for the rest of the week, tagging after him and, once a day, dragging him into the garden outside, to pay respects to the little mound in front of the bush._

 _“She’ll be back, right Dean?” Sam whispered, one night, and Dean could only squeeze his hand. “It’s alright, love,” he told him, and Sam tried not to cry. For Dean._

__

There was no reason not to cry now, though. Dean was gone. Stupid jerk. Catch someone else getting killed a hundred times in a row but still lip syncing to _The Heat of the Moment_ every morning as if they were idiotically addicted. Sam gave a strangled laugh that turned into a moan.

Something sniffed Sam’s ankle. Sam lifted his head from the pillow but he didn’t bother looking at the puppy. “Dean’ll be back, right?”

He felt a soft tongue licking his heel in response.

Sam dropped his head back into the pillow and his last thought was, “ _Yeah, because puppies are fortune-tellers_.”

__

When he woke the next morning, the puppy was gone.  
In two hours, Sam was gone, too.

Sam usually left off around three in the afternoon, not 10 in the morning, but puppies can change things.

__

The cassettes clacked in the glove box and Sam gritted his teeth. The radio blared some Beaetles, and he was thankful. _Paperback Writer_ wasn’t anything taboo. Taboo being something Dean particularly liked.  
But that didn’t mean Sam didn’t remember.  
Goddammit, Sam remembered everything.  
__

Night. He was scared of night, now. It was scary. It was dark, and he was supposed to be ing bed, covered up in a stupid fucking cocoon, vulnerable, out of action, like a trussed up chicken.

Dean, of course, was completely normal. He could do what he liked. Sleep at night? Sure. Sing in the car? You bet your life, yes. Call Sam his bitch? Well, of course. That helps Dean breathe.

It helps Sam breathe, too. For all the mush-mush and being sissy and the one who pouts when he loses his shoe, he can’t express himself that well either. Just, better than Dean. And a rock could express feelings better than Dean.

Dean can’t call Sam his bitch in his sleep, though. If he talks in his sleep, it’s usually about models. Sam doesn’t want to know if it’s gun models or Angelina Jolie lookalikes. So he doesn’t ask.

Sam’s up all night, though. All night, every night, and he only sleeps in the car. With Dean next to him, very much alive.

“Sammy, m’boy,” Dean declared, through a mouthful of pie one day, and Sam sinks into his seat. Here it comes. The awkward motherly-but-tough-older-brother speech.

“You think I can’t see that?”

Sam blinked. “What’d I do?”

“Nothing!”

“So…”

“You usually reply when I say something, Sam. You nod your head or say _sure_ or yeah or even _mmm_ when you’re feeling Frances, but something’s… wrong. You don’t do… _anything_. Your reactions are - _blank_. Dammit, you _have_ no reactions. You’re like…” Dean was at a loss for words and Sam suddenly felt crushed. He couldn’t quite breathe. And it felt like all the air in the world was pouring itself into his ears to clog into a lump in his throat.

Somebody was shaking his shoulders. “Sam, Sammy, c’mn love, listen to me.”

“Dean?” Sam asked, dully.

__

He woke up - _wait, he’d slept?_ \- in a blanket, with an icepack that had obviously melted quite some time ago, and Dean slouched over his feet, on the bed, mumbling in his sleep. It sounded like, “Mmm pie and… would… please and… no thank you and… Bobby… Sam… Mom… Ellen… _no_ , Dad… Sammy… Sammy.”

Sam sighed, and winced. He had some kind of sore throat he guessed and slipped back into sleep, almost, before he decided to talk. Dean was dreaming of pie, so he might as well.

 _3.02_ “Dean, why did Mom have to die?”

 _3.03_ “Dean, why did Mom have to die? Why couldn’t she just… I don’t know,” he finished, lamely.

 _3.15_ “I mean… why? Mom. Jessica. Madison. Am I some kind of freak?”

 _3.17_ A shaky laugh. “I mean more than you are.”

 _3.20_ “But yeah, obviously, right? Like, demon blood in me and shit.”

 _3.24_ “Not literally shit, though.”

 _3.26_ “I hope.”

 _3.40_ “De, remember Denny.”

 _3.42_ “You remember her, right? Pretty puppy with gray eyes. I found her. You took her out of the bushes.”

 _3.44_ “Remember when she died.”

 _3.50_ “I remember. She was beautiful, Dean.”

 _3.53_ “Like you.”

 _3.55_ “I felt really stupid without you, Dean. I mean really. My brain was all muddy and I couldn’t think straight anymore. I used up all my reactions during that time, I guess.”

 _3.58_ A dry chuckle. “Shit, that hurts.”

 _4.02_ “De, I love you.”

 _4.06_ “Okay no. Dean Winchester, I, Sam Winchester, love you. And I’m pretty goddamn useless and pointless without you.”

Dean waited some more, but Sam’s breathing had evened out, and by the feet by his side had relaxed. He’d woken up as soon as he heard Sam’s voice but he kept himself stock still.

Dean stayed where he was, staring at Sam. Staring at Sam and re-memorizing every detail. From fucking big forehead to the long brown hair, the small lips in their tired smile, the jaw, the adam’s apple, the quirky ears…

Dean smiled at Sam, his little baby brother, his stupid little bitch, and stretched out next to him and wrapped his arms around him, fitting his chin onto Sam’s shoulder so he could get a good view of Sam’s profile before he fell asleep.

“And I, Dean Winchester, love you, Sam Winchester.”

Sam was awake, of course he was. And he clung onto Dean’s arms and Dean’s voice and Dean’s words like they were his lifeline.


End file.
